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Robot Turtles to draw 3 year olds out of their coding shell

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By John Glenday, Reporter

February 20, 2014 | 1 min read

A game designed to encourage 3 year olds to code has debuted at the 2014 International American Toy Fair after becoming the most-funded board game in the history of Kickstarter.

Robot Turtles smashed its $25k funding target with pledges of $630k, freeing publisher ThinkFun to begin accepting preorders for the $24.99 title.

The old-fashioned concept has a leading edge goal by encouraging toddlers to get to grips with the concepts of programming by taking the experience offline.

Brainchild of former Google programmer Dan Shapiro it sees the child play the role of programmer and an adult the computer with the younger player then picking one of four coloured turtles and a jewel and placing them on the board.

From there the child must instruct the adult in the correct instructions for the turtle to reach the jewel by using cards corresponding to specific actions such as ‘turn left’ or ‘forward step’.

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